The centralizing force that sustains, integrates and bestows purpose to individual existence. The Sun symbolizes the principle of selfhood and will necessary to participate creatively in a greater whole.

Vitality, personal power and leadership. Activities and things associated with personal success and satisfaction. Grandeur, dignity, wisdom, eminence, generosity, mastery, honor and fame. Will power. The personality or ego. Fatherhood and the masculine principle. The solar principle is represented by the sun gods and father-godhead images of the many traditions: Ra of the Egyptians, Surya of the Hindus, Helios of the Greeks, and others.

The Sun represents the basic tone or vibration of one’s selfhood. In a birth chart it symbolizes the root power which sustains the whole person. It does not necessarily indicate how others perceive you, how you present yourself in daily life, or how you cope with the multiplicity of everyday demands—all of which are better symbolized by the Moon. Rather, the Sun represents your core purpose in life, and the quality of will necessary to realize and fulfill it. The Sun is the integrating principle which provides purpose and direction in life. In your birth chart, the Sun symbolizes your fundamental tone of being to which everything else resonates.

The Sun in a man’s horoscope symbolizes how he sees himself, his residual self-image—the idealized image of himself he formulated in youth, worked to fulfill through mid-life and continues to identifies with during late-life. It represents the personal ambitions, qualities and characteristics he most closely identifies with and seeks to embody. For a youth, the Sun (along with Saturn) represents the father figure and the idealized male role model. For a mature man, the Sun in his birth chart symbolizes his personal power base and his core sense of self and self-purpose.

The psychological functions and qualities represented by the Sun in a horoscope do not really differ between men and women, but social and cultural circumstances usually encourage women to express and actualize their solar potential within a more limited and specific context. The Sun’s place within the context of the chart as a whole often reveals the special sort of opportunities and difficulties a woman may experience in realizing her solar potential.
      The Sun in a woman’s birth chart also represents the key men in her life, and much can be said in a general sense on the subject.
      For a virgin, the Sun (along with Saturn) represents the father because he is the central male figure in her life until that role is assumed by a lover or husband.
      For a mature woman, the Sun in her horoscope represents the husband or lover, or the principal male figure in her life, because the Sun is the central masculine principle in astrology. For her, Mars symbolizes not so much the key man in her life as it does the general type of masculine expression she finds appealing and attractive. The Sun in a mature woman’s horoscope represents her idealize image of the father, the psychological material she tends to project upon men, qualities she generally expects them to express, and characteristics in men she finds desirable. Mars, which also carries a masculine polarity, in her chart represents lovers in general, especially in their biological aspect. In the horoscope of women, Saturn—another planet of masculine polarity, symbolizing age and authority—is the prime symbol of the father as an actual figure in a woman’s life.